"If that." Trevithick looked amused. "Now you see why I tend to put more stress on the engine's top speed."
Preen Chand, though, was still impressed, and worried. His beloved elephants were faster, but they were only flesh and blood. They had to rest, where the steam engine could go on and on and on. And yet, he thought, if I can show everyone how the elephants outdo this stinking contraption"Richard, load your train up, and I will load mine, and I will race you from here to Carthage."
"A race, eh?" Trevithick's bright eyes glowed. "How far is this Carthage place from here?"
"Fifty-three miles, a-tiny bit south of west. The railroad ends soon after it."
"Hmm." Preen Chand watched the engine handler go into that near-tranoe of conoentration again. When he emerged from it, he gave the elephant driver a respectful look. "That will be a very close thing, Preen. You know how embarrassing, and I mean financially as well as in the sense of a blow to my pride, it would be for me to lose?"
Preen Chand returned a bland shrug. "You've come all this way from Plymouth, Richard, to show off your ironmongery. How embarrassing would it be for word to get out that you refused a challenge from your competition?"
Trevithick laughed out loud. "You misunderstand me. I have no intention of refusing. When shall we start?"
"Tomorrow morning?"
"What?" George Soephenson let out a howl. "You're eastbound for Cairo tomorrow morning, Preen! What about your precious schedule?"
"Wel , what about it? If this steam engine comes in and replaces Caesar and Hannibal, then I will have to do as you suggested before and find other work, so it will not matter if the company fires me. But if elephants are better than machinery, the company should know that too.
They will thank me more for finding that out than they will be angry with me for being late. And besides, George, why should you worry?
Don't you own the town hotel?"
Stephenson suddenly looked crafty. "Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do."
"Here is a man who thinks of everything," Trevithick said admiringly. "I wonder if I ought to race against you after all, no, my friend, only a joke. But tomorrow morning will be too soon. We will have to load up waggons so both our trains carry equal weight....
George, you live i here, unlike either Preen or myself. Can you hire some sims from the locals to help the ones at the station here with that work?"
"Reckon so." Stephenson gave Trevithick a sidelong glanoe. "So long as I ain't payin' for it, that is."
Preen Chand gulped; he was never going to be rich on an elephant driver's salary. But Trevithick said, "I'll cover it, never fear.
What I don't make up on bets will come back in the long run through the ballyhoo this race will cause."
"Whatever you say. All I know is, you can't put no bal yhoo in the bank. Them folks are partial to gold."
"Who isn't?" Trevithick chuckled.
Preen Chand went back to the other side of the station to stop the unloading of his train, the less that came off, the less that would have to be put back tomorrow. The straw boss who oversaw Stephenson's gang of sims looked at him as if he were crazy. "First you was in a hurry to unload and now you want them put back. Can't you make up your fool mind?"
"Truly I am sorry, Mr. Dubois." Preen Chand had always thought the straw boss more capable than Stephenson, and treated him accordingly.
Dubois only grunted in disgust, then turned and shouted to the dozen sims that were unloading sacks of grain from the waggons. He gave hand signals to back his oral instructions. Sims could fol ow human speech, but had trouble imitating it. They much preferred to use gestures, and many overseers gave orders both ways, taking no chances on being misunderstood.
That care paid off now. One of the sims gaped in disbelief at the overseer. Its long, chinless jaw fell open to reveal yellow teeth bigger and stouoer than any man's. It ran a hand over what would have been a human's forehead, but was in the sim only a smooth slope behind bony browridges.
Back, it signed, adding the little gesture that turned the word to a question. Preen Chand usual y had some trouble following hand-talk, but the sim made the sign so emphatic, the way a man might shout an objection, that he understood it with ease.
Back, Dubois signed firmly. Put bags back.
The sim scratched its hairy cheek, let out a wordless hoot of protest.
It signed, Bad. Very bad. Work all gar e. From its point of view, Preen Chand supposed it had a point. But under Dubois's uncompromising eye, it and its comrades began putting the produce back aboard the train.
"What are they doing, Preen?" Paul Tilak demanded. "That should go in the warehouses here, look at the bill of lading. And why were they so slow getting here in the first place? Where was everyone, and why is everyone so excited?"
Very much the same set of questions, Preen Chand thought wryly, that he had thrown at George Stephenson. They had the same answer, too: "Steam engine."
"Damnation!" Tilak shouted, so loudly that Hannibal let out an alarmed snort and swung its shaggy head to see what was wrong with its driver.
"It is all right, real y it is," Tilak reassured him. The elephant snorted again, doubt ful y, but subsided.
"These accursed engines will be the ruination of us," Tilak said.
"I hope not."
"Of course they will." Tilak was gloomier by nature than Preen Chand. He noticed Dubois's gang of sims again.
"What are they doing, Preen?"
Preen Chand told him. Tilak's jaw dropped. He frowned.
"I do not know if we can beat this Trevithick, Preen, if his machine performs as he says it will."
"He does not know if he can beat us, either, which makes for a fair trial. Cheer up, Paul. Even if we lose, how are we worse off?
What will happen? The company will buy engines, just as it would without any race at all. But if we win, perhaps they will not."
Tilak looked unconvinced. Before the argument could go further, the passenger who had bothered Preen Chand from the coach window now grabbed him by the arm. "See here, sir Do I understand you to mean that this train will not proceed to Cairo, but rather is returning to Carthage?"
"I am afraid that is correct, sir." As gently as he could, Preen Chand shook free of the man's grasp. "I am so very sorry for any inconvenience this may, "
"Inconvenience?" the man exclaimed.
His face was al most as red as his waistcoat. "Do you know, sir, that I stand to lose out on a very profitable investment opportunity if I am delayed here?"
That was too much for Preen Chand. The deference that was part of his railroading persona went by the board. He stuck his face an inch from the pasnger's nose and bel owed, "God damn you to hel , do you know that I stand to lose out on a job I have loved for twenty-five years and that my father and grandfather held before me. I piss on your investment opportunity, and for a copper sester I'd black your eye, tool" Tilak quickly stepped between them before they could start a fight. The passenger stamped away, still yelling threats.
Preen Chand looked toward his beloved elephants. The ostlers had set out big wooden tubs of water for them.
"Derrl" he shouoed to Caesar "Splash!" He thrust out his arm, pointing to the obnoxious fellow with whom he'd been quarreling. Caesar snorted up a big trunkful of water and let it go in s a sudden shower, that drenched Preen Chand. Tilak and Dubois got wet too, and hopped back swearing. The fellow the elephant driver had intended to soak got off unscathed.
"It has been that kind of day," Preen Chand sighed. "Fetch me a towel, please, someone."
Instead of starting the next morning, as Preen Chand had proposed, the race did not begin until three days later. Part of the delay was from loading waggons so that the elephants and the steam engine would pul about the same amount of weight. The rest came from dickering over conditions.